It sounds great, going to skip the zero (was never in stock) and go straight to the zero/W, this is perfect for remote sensors and actuators (I think, don't have it yet, going to order 5 to start)
Yes, you could but it's still kinda overkill for just a bunch of sensors and actuators. With limited soldering a Wemos D1 mini would do a much better job. Use the raspberry as an IoT home server to push the sensor data to.
I keep reading this, but I power all mine with 5v phone-chargers via the mini USB socket. There are output pins for 5v and 3v so you can choose the appropriate power for your display/whatever. I've seen nothing go wrong.
This is a legitimate complaint at the moment, but with more and more development boards going 3.3v it just means you should always have logic level converters on hand. Luckily they are readily available, quite cheap, and small
I'm pretty new to Arduino and the ESP8266, but doesn't this involve breaking out all the pins to another board to do the level conversion? I was hoping there'd be a converter in shield form.
Ah yes, I am not aware of a logic converter shield at the moment, most are in an IC or a small breakout board like the sparkfun below.
I tend to avoid shields in projects as they are more expensive, take up more space, and not as flexible (can't be used as easily with another board e.g. teensy 3.0 vs arduino uno)
